FALLEN ANGEL

Uriah Heep

Heavy Prog

2.46 | 228 ratings

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Easy Livin
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Poppy

The third and final Uriah Heep album with John Lawton on vocals, and the last for the time being with the long serving Lee Kerslake on drums.

While Ken Hensley still dominates the song writing, the rest of the band also make contributions. Lawton for example wrote 2 tracks, and co-wrote a third. Unfortunately, with Hensley having contributed so much to previous albums, his inspiration appears to be declining rapidly, and the rest of the band do not share his worthy credentials in that field. Understandable as this is, It does make for a somewhat disappointing album. Things would get worse on subsequent output before they got better and taken in context, this is far from being a bummer. The band themselves (Hensley and Box) in the sleeve notes for the 1997 remaster felt that the album was a bit "poppy", and this a fair description.

Ironically the best track is Lee Kerslake ballad "Come back to me" (co-written with Hensley), written as an anguished plea to his then recently estranged wife. Lawton's vocals are ideal for the song, which he sings with great passion.

The tracks are all short, the longest being the title track at just over 5 minutes. On "One more night", Lawton almost carries off an Elvis impersonation, but on most of the tracks, the performance is all too similar and lightweight. In retrospect, it's all to obvious that the band had taken their eye of the ball, and were drifting away from their roots, into a more commercial area which did not fit well with their strengths. It would be several years until they found their way again.

By the way, the sleeve was a vast improvement from "Innocent victim", with a rather attractive image of a female warrior who has just vanquished her next meal, in the gatefold cover.

Easy Livin | 2/5 | 2004-7-7

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